The contractor shall plan and carry out an evaluation of the impact of the National Information Infrastructure on health care, research, or public health. To the extent applicable, the contractor shall evaluate methods to preserve the privacy of individual health data while also providing efficient access for legitimate health care, research and public health purposes. The contractor shall also assess the utility of emerging health data standards in health applications of advanced communications and computing technologies. This specific approach taken by the University of Washington is entitled "From Bench to Bedside and Beyond: Building and Testing an Integrated Regional Medical Information Network for the Pacific Northwest." It will create a University of Washington Academic Medical Center (UWAMC) regional health information infrastructure and evaluate its impact on access, quality and cost of health care and public health beyond its institutional walls. This project will integrate and apply current and emerging technologies to provide greater access, ease of use, and cost- effective delivery of quality health care. The project will move the UWAMC toward the vision of providing health-related information resources and decision support tools and data at the time and place of need by health cam providers across the region. The telediagnosis and teleconferencing elements of the project will allow distant providers to "see" patients and each other, enable clinicians at clinical sites across the region to better communicate, collaborate, and gain access to UW Health Sciences Libraries and Information Center resources and services. Our regional health information network will also offer appropriate provider access to secure patient-related data from multiple sources; facilitate sharing of appropriate data; and experiment with providing confidential electronic mail links between providers, and between providers and their patients.